What do you do when your life is crumbling around you? It can happen to anyone - we’re all vulnerable to personal disaster. We normally survive these experiences, despite the pain and hardships, but lose important things in the process. However, you may get a chance to rebuild your life. If you do, what are the key ingredients for grasping this second chance and rebuilding your life?

There are four key ingredients to using a second chance to get back on top of life: capability; determination; support; and hope.

CAPABILITY

You must use your skills and knowledge to their fullest advantage when needed. If you are unemployed, you need to assess your skills and experience to identify job opportunities. Maybe you need to be flexible about where and when you work. Maybe you’ll need to move somewhere else.

Perhaps you’ve overlooked viable career opportunities. If you are a competent corporate trainer, you must have teaching ability, organizational and presentation skills. Maybe you could teach at community college or high school. You could also look at different jobs which require strong communications skills, such as public relations. Don’t dismiss any other skills or knowledge that you possess. Relationships, people skills, physical assets everything is an asset!

DETERMINATION

Keep trying. Try harder, try smarter, try differently, but don’t stop trying. You can improve your situation. Don’t stop trying to use your capabilities. You will face adversity, but you’ve got to seize a second chance when it appears. Don’t give up.

SUPPORT

Fighting your way back to normal can be very, very difficult to do alone. Granted, your personal disaster may be a divorce, a death, or a betrayal which destroys part of your support network. However, if you look hard enough, with the right attitude, you can find support. Start your search with family, followed by friends and colleagues. Don’t overlook the possibility of professional help, whether from a medical doctor, psychologist, or counselor. Don’t forget charities or volunteer organizations. Help is out there, somewhere. You have to be brave and strong enough to ask for it. Whether you need a sympathetic ear, a mentor, a kindred spirit, or a drill sergeant, you must look.

HOPE

If you’re a religious person, you might have faith in a higher power to see you through adversity. If you aren’t religious, you might consider hope as your final key ingredient, as hope and faith are intertwined. You have to believe that things can get better. Hope, along with support, gives you the energy, the drive, and the optimism needed to fuel your determination. Recovering and restarting can be long, lonely, and brutal. You need something to help you through the challenges you’ll face. Hope is the fuel to see you through. By fueling your determination through support and hope for a better tomorrow, you can use your capabilities to take advantage of a second chance.

CONCLUSION

Other things can help you take advantage of a second chance. Some would argue that you need to be lucky to succeed. Realistically, you need to believe that you can rebuild your life without getting a lucky break. There’s too much at stake to depend solely on luck. You have to look for opportunities, size them up, and then use any means that you have to take advantage of them. The four ingredients will give you a fighting chance to succeed. I sincerely hope that these ideas can help you.

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This article contributed by Mark Dykeman - a writer at Helium.com